Jason Douglas

Spyder Trap Online Marketing

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to attend Reupations with keynote speaker Chris Brogan, and panelists Beth LaBreche from LaBreche;  Gabby Nelson from Select Comfort , Paula Prahl from Best Buy, and Brian Vanderah from Quality Bike Products.

Brogan kicked off the event with a Zulu greeting ‘Sawubona’, which translates to ‘I see you’, which means ‘I know that you’re there and I acknowledge you are another person’. His presentation was a nice mix of random thoughts, dry humor (even a Star Wars reference), and serious points.

The main takeaways from Brogan’s presentation and the panel discusion:

-There are three main parts of social media: Listening. Connecting. Publishing.

-Brogan said that we should ‘connect with the verticals that aren’t yours’. He was critical of the Minneapolis and St. Paul social media community. He cited Pittsburgh as leaders in social media everything. What the MSP group needs to do is not be so exclusive, but learn how to work together. He added ‘it’s a lot easier to go to battle with a large army.’

-Brogan called Vanilla Ice a social media prophet, citing the line ‘Stop. Collaborate, and listen!’ That gained a fair amount of laughter, but was an interesting take.

-Beth LaBreche discussed how she invited her clients to the Reputations event and even sent out copies of Brogan’s Trust Agents to out-of-state clients. One client responded very negatively to the book and said ‘they’re not ready’ for this. This was very apparent in the attendance of this event. One of my first tweets from the Spyder Trap account: ‘good crowd forming for #reputations #broganmpls. A lot of familiar faces.’ Events such as this one wasn’t necessarily for social media professionals like myself and companies like Spyder Trap. It’s the businesses who have a fear, a hesitation, or a lack of knowledge about what social media can do for a business that need to be at these events. The question: how do we get them there?

Overall, this was a very fun event. I ran into some familiar faces, and was lucky enough to talk with him for a while, and even snap a picture with him. Look for more with Brogan and Spyder Trap in the near future.

For those who  attended, following the hashtags, or watching on UStream, what were your thoughts on Brogan’s presentation and the panel discussion?